There's plenty at stake during the final three races of the 2025 Formula 1 season, but some drivers and teams have far more to lose than others.

Here's who we think has the most to lose across the title-deciding Las Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi triple-header.

Lando Norris: The championship

An obvious starting point is the current championship leader: Lando Norris.

He, by definition, has the most to lose. A world championship victory is within his grasp, with a 24-point lead and the momentum of having outscored his main title rival and McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri for six rounds in a row.

Anything but a title victory will be a deep disappointment for Norris, who just has to keep up the momentum that has transformed his season since the Zandvoort DNF at the end of August, which left him 34 points behind Piastri.

Nothing is guaranteed for 2026, so a driver never knows if they'll get as good a shot to win an F1 title as Norris has right now.

And unlike Max Verstappen, he doesn't already have four of them. Just entering title contention has been one big bonus for Verstappen.

The Red Bull driver really doesn't have anything to lose; whether he drops out of contention in Las Vegas or takes it all the way to Abu Dhabi, he's been this season's top performer and will end up far closer to the title than ever looked possible during Red Bull's mid-season slump.

Oscar Piastri: His title-contending transformation

Piastri also has a championship on the line, but probably more important is the reputation he earned from putting himself into title contention in the first place.

Piastri started 2025 in such strong form, excelling at circuits he struggled at during 2024 and looking like he could usurp Norris as McLaren's spearhead going forward.

There seemed to be a mental robustness to Piastri, error-free and possessing a sharp wheel-to-wheel edge that Norris lacked.

But all of that has been thrown into doubt by his slump since Baku in September, with three-race ending crashes, large qualifying deficits to Norris, and plenty of signs that Piastri is struggling under the weight of his first title fight.

Piastri can still win the title, but right now he's sliding down a one-way street to slipping out of title contention before the Abu Dhabi finale and the fact that his struggles have predominantly been on low-grip surfaces means a freezing cold Las Vegas GP could be his worst nightmare.

Even if he falls short of the title, Piastri must arrest this slump and get back on level terms with Norris.

Otherwise, it's going to raise uncomfortable questions over the winter about his ability to deal with the intensity of the closing stages of a title fight.

Ferrari: The faith of its drivers

Ferrari president John Elkann's "focus on driving and talk less" remarks in the wake of Ferrari's disastrous Brazilian GP weekend have only added fuel to the fire that is the team's poor 2025.

It has produced a new dimension of the drivers being somehow to blame for Ferrari's underperformance, where it faces an uphill battle to avoid its lowest championship position (fourth) since it finished sixth in 2020.

How exactly Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton respond to such a surprising slice of public criticism both on and off the track at the Las Vegas GP will be very interesting.

While you can make an argument that Hamilton needs to stand on a grand prix podium before the end of 2025, his season will go down as a disappointment either way. How he starts 2026 will be much more important in defining whether his Ferrari stint is destined to be a failure.

But over 2025's final races, it will be interesting to see if he still believes he has the backing of Elkann, who was instrumental in convincing Hamilton to join in the first place, almost 24 months ago.

And as for Leclerc, will his faith in the Ferrari project be shaken? After all, Leclerc was stringing together a strong end to his season before he was wiped out on the restart in Brazil.

He's already warned Ferrari of the importance of getting 2026 right. So while early next year will probably decide his future, how it ends 2025 amid some pointed comments from above is important for Ferrari too, if it's not to lose one of its biggest assets.

Yuki Tsunoda: His seat

Yuki Tsunoda's fate may already be sealed, given Isack Hadjar has been the long-rumoured favourite to become Verstappen's 2026 team-mate, but Red Bull's still officially yet to make its decision, having delayed its original Mexican GP deadline.

That means Tsunoda still has some time to at the very least ensure Red Bull gives him an F1 seat for 2026, even if it's back at Racing Bulls.

Because outside of the Red Bull stable, there are zero race seat opportunities for Tsunoda and even looking ahead to 2027, it's difficult to see where he'd find a space.

So Tsunoda has to make things work with Red Bull and avoid another galling weekend like Brazil, where he was the slowest driver in qualifying and the last driver to take the chequered flag in the race.

That kind of form just makes you unavoidably replaceable and has done the world of harm to Tsunoda's reputation, only serving to back up the reservations Red Bull had about handing him the seat in the first place.

Liam Lawson: His F1 career

Given Hadjar would have a really hard time screwing up his path to Red Bull promotion, Liam Lawson is the other driver in the Red Bull puzzle with the most to lose.

Should he lose his seat, then his F1 career will, in all likelihood, be over. He's facing competition to hold onto it from both Formula 2 driver Arvid Lindblad below and Tsunoda above.

Lindblad has two more F2 rounds, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and decent performances there would go a long way to him sealing an F1 promotion for 2026 that he's long looked set for.

So that should make it a battle between Lawson and Tsunoda for the second Racing Bulls seat if Hadjar is promoted to the top team.

Lawson needs to prove he can be the best benchmark alongside Lindblad and the most reliable points scorer for Racing Bulls.

He did that well in Brazil, beating Hadjar on an ambitious one-stop strategy, ending a poor run of form since his fifth place in Baku.

Another couple of top weekends like Baku and Brazil, and Red Bull will have a hard time clearing out a dependable points scorer from its line-up, especially when the alternative has scored far fewer in a theoretically stronger car.

Haas: Justifying its late-season upgrade

Picking a midfield team with the most to lose is tricky.

The obvious choice is Williams. Fifth in the constructors' championship for pretty much the entire season, and with a car that's easily been the class of the midfield, it would be hugely disappointed if it slipped back now.

But with a 29-point advantage, it should be safe, barring a surprise Alpine 2024-style double podium for one of its rivals.

Then you have Racing Bulls, which has taken some of the pressure off itself in sixth place following a double-points finish in Brazil.

Plus, exactly where Red Bull's second team finishes in the standings has never felt like a top priority for the wider company.

Aston Martin and Sauber's soon-to-be Audi outfit will be more focused on where they end up in 2026 than at the end of 2025.

And Alpine's 2025 season is such a write-off that Pierre Gasly picking up two points in Brazil has already been a nice unexpected bonus to take into the winter.

So that leaves F1's smallest team, Haas, with probably the most to lose in F1 2025's run-in, with each place in the standings worth around an extra $10million.

That money is going to mean the most to Haas of all the teams. Especially when you consider how disadvantaged it potentially is for 2026 with no simulator of its own and how tied Haas's 2026 prospects are to engine (and multiple other car parts) supplier Ferrari's.

Haas's late-season upgrade has made it the class of the midfield since its introduction at Austin. That was an ambitious upgrade, given we're so close to the end of these regulations, so Gene Haas will be expecting a return on that investment.

Ollie Bearman has used it to score more than three times as many points (22) as the next-best midfield drivers (Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz, and Lawson, who've all scored six) over the last three rounds.

So continuing anywhere near that kind of momentum really should be enough for Haas to move from eighth to sixth in the championship, which would fully justify that upgrade - but squandering chances is something the team's been wary about.

That's even without factoring in Esteban Ocon, who has been comprehensively beaten by Bearman in the second half of the season.

Ocon has an important job in proving the intra-team Haas fight hasn't swung decisively in Bearman's favour, or he may be one of the key at-risk drivers for 2026.